[Hide Comment] Dunno when this was posted about this route, but I thought there was a different post. If you climb the seldom formed first pitch it's easily WI5, you decide, but shimmying your hands up the backside of an icicle with 50' of a slab below you with no reliable gear isn't WI4.

Check out the pictures....and it's easily a 5 star classic. Nov 30, 2007

[Hide Comment] Description:

Park on the road near the base of the route, the gulley comes all the way down to the road. Walk up the gulley to the base of the route, the first pitch when in is a bit harder than WI3 so be ready for some steep sketchy climbing off the bat.

Or just before the gulley makes a final break to the left is a scree field that if you climb up when you get to the top there is a troth that will require some thought full climbing to get to a spot that drops you above the first pitch.

After the first pitch you solo up about 5 small bulges and walk and walk till you get to one of the magnificent double bulges, pitches you can see from the road. Climb up the WI3 flows, 3 in all to another slog.

Which gets you to the final massive pitch.

60 meters of beautiful ice right next to the feature the route gets it's name from.

There is a WI3 and WI5 lines on this pitch and easily large enough to have 2 parties on it.

Stunning position, way off the valley floor, because of the meandering nature of the WI3 line I find it best to do it in 2 pitches to the top.

There is a tree at the top you can rapp from, but I didn't think it was big enough and the rope would have dragged over the rock, so as I do on almost all South Fork climbs I made a V-thread and in one long rappel you get back to the base.

In total as we topped out late we did 4 rappels in total to the ground.

Note the top of the first pitch had some dangerous anchors around blocks, when there is some good ice just 30 feet up the gulley to make an V-thread and safely rap, instead of some sketchy cord around blocks in the gulley.

P.S. if your going to post a route of this nature too bad you can't put more effort into it than saying "get the book and follow the description".........

LAME Feb 11, 2012

[Hide Comment] Did this puppy with Mark Watkins on 1/20/13. First pitch not in and had to do some interesting bouldering around the first two chockstones lower down. The upper ice pitches are all in thickly but the low angle areas between them are hard snow instead of ice. Makes for fast work between pitches kicking up snow. Jan 22, 2013

[Hide Comment] Did this on Sunday, and found the (small) tree rappel at the top of the last pitch to be a pretty poor choice. A pair of badly-faded (but otherwise new-looking) ropes were hanging from the rap rings and frozen deep into the ice below. Obviously a previous party got them stuck and ended up leaving them. We cut them from the top, and again where they buried into the ice so we could pack out as much as possible. There's going to be another ~10-20m of each that eventually melts out below. We then had trouble pulling our ropes - super stuck on the rough rock below the tree. We ended up soloing the 1st ~15m of the pitch and building a screw anchor at the base of the steeper ice far right so we could yard hard on them, and they eventually came down. Wouldn't recommend it to others. If you want to use the tree rap I'd suggest bringing a long cord and extending it over the rock. It'll make for a really tricky rap, but at least you won't lose your ropes. If the ice is good (it wasn't this weekend) a v-thread makes a lot more sense. Feb 22, 2017

[Hide Comment] There are rap bolts on top of P1, left side. 34m rap to base. Jan 21, 2018

[Hide Comment] If you wish to bypass the first pitch, you can. Once you get to the base of the first pitch, retrace your steps back 50-100 feet. Look to the east, and find your way up the loose slope following the path of least resistance. Once on top of this slope, direct you path northward. You should be above the first pitch now - it will be generally down to your left as you face north. You'll see the snow gulley that leads eventually up to pitch 2 (you won't be able to see pitch 2). The goal is to get DOWN into this gulley. As the potential down climbing gets sketchy, look for a rap station. There are two bolts with a rap ring on some cord to rappel down in the gulley. Please be sure to inspect the cord before trusting it. It was fine on 2/10/18. Also, from this rap station, you can rappel ALL the way to the base of pitch with a single 70M - it's a rope a stretcher so tie knots even if you are super close to the ground. The rap station I am describing is separate from the usual rap station (two bolts) at the top of pitch one. Feb 12, 2018

[Hide Comment] Pitch 1 is currently in. A bit thin at the top out, but manageable. A belay anchor was hard to find though. I'm just now seeing a comment below mentions rap anchors at the top of pitch 1. I dug around in the snow looking for a gear anchor and never found any bolts or any useful cracks for clean gear (all I had). Some knifeblades might be helpful though. Feb 19, 2018

[Hide Comment] There's a nice two bolt rap station at the top of p1. We rapped off natural anchors and some slung trees and blocks for the rest of the climb. Dec 24, 2019